


They Will Join You In The Light

by coolbreezemage



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Time Skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-30 17:02:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20776196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coolbreezemage/pseuds/coolbreezemage
Summary: Marianne was there when he woke on the third day of his illness, head finally clear enough to consider the foolishness of allowing his wound to get to this state. She sat looking away from him, head bowed in prayer.Quietly, he asked, “Have I disappointed you, Marianne?”





	They Will Join You In The Light

Most days, it heartened him to see the Cardinals' Room full of his allies, so many people that they'd had to bring in extra chairs from the library to seat them all. They came from three houses and from foreign lands, and yet they'd all united under the banner of the Kingdom. 

But after five years of lonely hunting and scavenging, it could be somewhat overwhelming at times. Today was most certainly one of those times. He was having trouble concentrating, which was already a bad sign. At least the headaches had been kept at bay so far, though it was hard to tell when everything else ached so much. The room was so damned hot, and a cut on his arm from a recent battle itched intolerably. But they were depending on him, and so he kept his composure as they reviewed their strategy for the umpteenth time, all of them looking to him for approval he'd already given. 

The Professor called a break after perhaps two hours of this, to the evident relief of no few of their number, who filed out the door for food and other needs. Only a few remained behind, mostly those who had once been Blue Lions students and a few of the knights, minus Alois, who muttered something about too much spice in the last night's meal and hurried out, and Shamir, who was off with the soldiers patrolling the town. Lorenz, who they'd accepted into their forces after his surrender at the Bridge of Myrddin, set about preparing tea. Why anyone would want hot drinks in this weather, Dimitri had no idea. 

Annette and Mercedes were somewhere off to his right discussing… decorating the dining hall? At least that's what he thought they were planning. It didn't concern him, so he let his attention drift towards the others. Dimitri saw no reason to speak, and so he didn't, only listened closely as the Professor and Gustave reviewed reports and tracked the movement of Kingdom loyalists in the east, all the while resisting the need to tear at the slash on his arm, which still hadn't stopped tormenting him. 

He managed to ignore the decorating discussion until Mercedes exclaimed, “Let's see what Dimitri thinks!”

Annette, of course, agreed. “Just a sec, let me finish this drawing…” She scribbled urgently for a few more moments. “Here! What do you think? Looks fun, right?”

"Annette, I can't see you if you stand over there." He'd gotten used to fighting with one eye long ago, learned to listen so he could never be taken off guard on his blind side, but having friendly conversations was somehow a different matter altogether. 

"Ack, I'm sorry!" Contrite, Annette hopped into view. He peered at the piece of paper in her hands. There were a lot of rectangular things - were those supposed to be tables? And circular things that might have been plates, and curly things sticking down from the top. 

“It looks, uh… good,” he said, uncertainly. 

She pouted. “Aw, just ‘good’? I thought you'd be more excited. Are you feeling all right?”

“When have I ever been excited about decorating?”

Mercedes circled around the table, frowning. “Now that you say so, he really doesn't look well…” Of course someone would notice eventually. Dimitri braced himself for the fuss that was sure to follow. 

“Could it be poison?” Annette suggested, a horrified look crossing her face. 

That, at least, he knew wasn't the case. “No. I haven’t… haven’t eaten today.”

Annette hummed. “Maybe that’s your problem. Do you want me to go grab something from the kitchens? There should still be some little cakes from last night...”

Mercedes leaned forward and put her hand on his face before he could pull away. “No, he’s feverish.” That was enough to get the attention of almost everyone still in the room. 

Ingrid strode over to them. “Illness? But nobody else has gotten sick…”

“Hmm.” Mercedes studied him in that way that meant she was reading every detail he would rather keep hidden. “Dimitri, does anything particularly hurt, or feel hot?”

Everything did, but most especially his shoulder.

More hands on him. Ingrid's, unfastening his cloak and working at his uniform until she had his arm exposed. 

"Ingrid, please..."

She pressed her fingers against the burning gash there. “Dimitri, this is infected.”

An infected wound. That made sense of it all. “Oh. So it is.”

“How long have you been feeling ill?” she demanded. “And when did you get this?” 

It was getting harder to think through the dizziness and the cursed heat. “The monsters we fought on the way back to the monastery. One of them swiped at me."

“So I see," Ingrid said. And then, voice rising, "And you didn’t consider maybe TELLING SOMEONE YOU WERE INJURED?"

Dedue stepped forward. "Ingrid." A warning. Dimitri would have been grateful for it, if he didn't already know that Dedue's disapproval would be at least as strong as hers and twice as difficult to bear. He'd blame himself for not seeing it, Dimitri was sure of that. 

“There was never time…” he protested, uselessly.

“You’re our prince, there’s always time.” Ingrid blew out an angry breath. “Ever since we came back, you’ve done nothing but worry us! If you die, this entire army collapses, you know that, right?” 

Dimitri shook his head. It wasn't a good idea - if he hadn't already been sitting, the wave of unsteadiness might have made him stumble. “You have the Professor. You could get along without me.”

He should have known Dedue would be the one to reply to that assertion, in heavy words that carried with them nine years of devotion. 

"There are no doubt many in this world who could lead an army of this size,” he said. “But you, Your Highness, you cannot be replaced. Not in their hearts, and not in mine."

He tasted bitter shame. They worried for him, and even if he did not deserve their care, he owed it to them to keep himself hale and guide them to victory. 

"All right, all right. I'll submit to your coddling."

"It is not coddling. It is proper medical care."

And he had learned within days of first meeting Dedue that there was absolutely no arguing with him when he had set himself on assisting his lord. 

Ingrid, of course, was still angry. “You need to tell people when you need help!” she said. “That's why we have healers and medics! Or I swear by the Goddess, I'll have Manuela strip you naked after every-”

“Hey,” Sylvain called from the doorway. “We're taking people's clothes off and you didn't invite me? I'm hurt.”

“Sylvain!” Ingrid scolded, the tone ruined somewhat by the fact that she was clearly trying not to laugh. 

“What? He's a pretty good-looking guy. You know, when he isn't snarling at everyone.”

It served to break the tension, which had probably been Sylvain’s goal. This whole affair was humiliating enough without Ingrid continuing her rant. 

“I can help.” A soft voice, one he had so rarely heard absent of fear and distress. Marianne stood in the doorway, enough determination on her face for Sylvain to step out of her way without another word. “I’ve… I heard most of what you were saying. I can heal the wound, but the fever will have to burn itself out.”

Dedue ushered her forward. “If you can assist, please do so.”

Unlike the others, Marianne waited for him to nod before touching him. She pressed a gentle hand to his too-hot skin and poured cool white light into the jagged cut. The wound sealed itself, leaving behind only a faint itch and one more scar amidst all the rest. For a few glorious moments, it also chased away the oppressive heat and cleared his head, but then it faded, and the fever regained its grasp on him.

“Thank you, Marianne." He felt a fool. Had he asked her only a few days before, it could have spared his friends so much trouble. 

She smiled - a small and beautiful thing that was gone the next moment. 

“We should get him to bed,” she said. 

“Oh, suuure…” Sylvain began, and then yelped when Ingrid drove her elbow into his side. 

Dimitri sighed, and stood, and thankfully didn’t stumble, though Marianne and Dedue both hung close in case he did. “Professor. I'm sorry…”

“Rest,” the Professor told him, and it was an order. 

Marianne stayed by his side as they made their way from the Cardinals’ Room to what had once been the noble students’ dormitories and now housed those same students, this time as Kingdom generals. Her presence was comforting, yes, but not enough for him to ignore what lay ahead of him. Fever had a way of stripping away sense and memory, of uncovering buried pain. If he once again lost his conscious control over that well of darkness within him… might it overtake him again? He considered, as he had many times before, asking the Professor to kill him if that happened, and knew it for a useless plan before he'd even finished the thought. 

Dedue followed close behind, no doubt planning to catch him if he fell. There was no way for Dimitri to say what he needed to without him hearing. But then, he held few secrets that Dedue did not know, and after this fever, he would likely have even fewer. 

“Marianne. I… I'm afraid. If I cannot think clearly, if I remember only my anger and not what I have learned since…”

She waited, listening, until it was clear he could not finish the sentence. “You need to trust yourself.”

It was not advice he would ever have expected to hear from her, and yet he could not imagine accepting it from anyone else. 

“I will try.”

“We will not leave you,” she promised. That, he believed.

***

That first night was by far the worst. For what felt an eternity he walked the barren ridges of Ailell, stalked by those he had killed. He fought them again, and their souls cursed him as they faded away into the smoke. 

It was not enough to banish them entirely. When at last the heat of the fever lessened for a time, whether by a healer’s spell or something else, he found himself chasing ghosts through the cathedral’s catacombs with little more than Areadbhar’s glow to guide him. He slaughtered countless foes, all of them phantoms whose black blood vanished from his blade as soon as they fell. 

It was Marianne’s voice that brought him back after every skirmish, her voice that guided him to a corridor that led out into the light. He lost track of how many times he descended into that bewildering place, only knowing that each time he did, he was sure to find his way out again. 

At last he woke in truth, to sunlight and her tired, relieved smile at his side.

He was still weak and feverish, and to his mixed chagrin and relief, the Professor sent word that he was to remain in bed for at least another day. But the dreams were easier after that. Pointless stuff: maps that changed before his eyes, battles where his allies vanished from his side and the enemy advanced yet never reached him. In his dreams, he still had all his vision, and perhaps that was enough to remind him that what he saw was lies.

Even through the haze of confusion and exhaustion and pain, he could figure out that his allies had their most skilled healers on rotation, surely pulled from far more important work to watch over him and keep him from doing anything rash. Had that been the Professor’s idea? Or perhaps Dedue's? 

Sometimes it was Mercedes at his bedside, her gentle smile and sweet voice nearly enough to soften the scolding she gave him every time he tried to sit up. Sometimes it was Linhardt, who always brought a book with him and had a score of spells at his fingertips to help Dimitri sleep, for which he was too grateful to express. And sometimes it was Marianne, who sat looking away from him, head bowed in prayer. 

It was Marianne who was there when he woke on the third day of his illness, head finally clear enough to consider the foolishness of allowing his wound to get to this state. 

Quietly, he asked, “Have I disappointed you, Marianne?”

She didn't answer. For a moment he wondered if she was too deep in her prayers to hear him, and then she said, “I used to feel the same, you know. Each battle, I would pray it would be the one that killed me, so that I would no longer be a burden on my friends.” He could not see her face, but the dawn light through the window illuminated her head like a halo. He chided himself for the fanciful thought. “But someone was always there to save me. Hilda, Claude. The Professor, even before I joined your class. And you.”

He remembered that conversation, so long ago now. And the one shortly after, when they'd discovered how much they shared, the dark and sorrowful things that others dared not speak of in their hearing.

“I am not trying to die,” he promised. “Not anymore.” Of the time he had spent as a rogue, he could not be so certain. "I simply forgot, truly. We were so busy when we returned, with all those messengers…”

At last she turned, and met his gaze. "But that's the same thing, isn't it? If you care so little for yourself that you fail to recognize when you need healing, that's throwing away the Goddess’s gift of life just as surely as if you'd stepped before a sword.”

She was right, as much as he didn't want to admit it. But was it truly such a sin?

"I am accustomed to pain."

"That doesn't make it right that you should suffer."

Such a strange thought. If he could bear it, and it was his duty, why should he not take on what pain he could, and save his allies the need to carry it for him? And yet, she had walked a path so close to his. She too held something beastly within her. And she had fought it, and she had won. He hoped he might someday be strong enough to do the same. For now, he would trust the advice she gave, and submit himself to her care.

“I will try not to, then. For your sake,” he said, and the answer pleased her.

Gustave deemed him fit for training later that day. He spent a good few hours sparring with Catherine, who made some coy remarks about fighting a convalescent before he managed to disarm her and she started striking in earnest. When she left for patrol duty, Felix joined him on the training grounds for the first time since they had reunited. Felix swore he had never been worried at all, which of course meant that he had been very worried. Before long the two of them were trading friendly insults as they darted in and out of range. It felt almost like their schoolboy days: Felix fought dirty, Dimitri learned his movements and countered them with sheer strength until Felix found a new angle and forced him to craft a new strategy, again and again. By the end of it they were both aching and satisfied and arguing amiably over who’d done better.

Hunger brought them to the dining hall and the boisterous laughter of the others, cheered by a recent series of victories against Empire forces. As Annette and Mercedes had promised, the hall had been decked out in ribbons with bowls of flowers on every table. The curly things from Annette’s drawing turned out to be spirals cut from colored paper and hung from strings. It was a cheerful sight, if perhaps a little childish, and he made sure to tell the pair that they'd done well. Ashe prepared them a truly fine dish from what must have been the most valuable things in their supplies, and Dimitri didn’t have the heart to tell him he barely tasted any of it. But it was an enjoyable evening even so, and when Dimitri at last retired to bed he slept well for for the first time he could remember. 

The morning brought with it more messengers and strategy meetings. He felt more concerned eyes on him than usual. He supposed he deserved it, for making them care for him instead of taking proper care of himself to begin with. He wanted to imagine that he might never again give them cause to do so, but he knew Marianne would chide him for that. If his friends felt it right that they should care for him, he would not refuse that gift.

Shortly before noon, they rode out to face a gang of bandits who’d been sighted in the area. Ingrid brought her pegasus mount down low to speak to him as they traveled. “I’m serious about that threat, you know,” she warned.

“Do not worry, Ingrid,” he told her. “I will not let that happen again. I was a fool and I know it.”

She laughed in surprise. “It might have been worth the whole thing just to hear you say that.”

“You will be seeing a lot more of my mistakes and confessions in future, I am sure of that.”

“While we’re defeating the Empire, you mean?”

He smiled. “When I am King and you are leading my knights. If you are willing.”

She froze for a single beat of her mount’s wings. “I- Your Highness - yes, I will!” The joy and dedication on her face could have filled a hundred books of knightly tales. He was certain her deeds would too, in time. 

Marianne was smiling too when he spurred his horse to her side. “They’ll be wonderful knights, all of them,” she said. “Ingrid, Ashe, Dedue… I can’t wait to see it.”

“And you as well,” he reminded her. “I need you perhaps most of all.”

Her eyes widened in alarm. “As a knight?”

“As an advisor. As- as a friend. If that is a path you wish to follow.” He could not ask for more than that now, but perhaps, when this war was won...

Light spread across her face. “It is,” she said, and there was more certainty in her voice then than he had ever heard before.

He had known all his life that someday he would be king, and then all at once it had become a distant shattered dream. Now, it was a reality again, and growing closer every day. And he wanted them all by his side when that day came. For he wouldn’t be the man he was without them, and he’d heard tell it was a poor king who didn’t have advisors wiser than himself.


End file.
